winter time coffee shop hopping

It's funny thinking about those past almost-end-of-winter months when it was just impossibly cold and impossibly dark because my mood was also impossibly cold and impossibly dark. And I was impossibly needy yet impossibly reclusive and impossibly worried. Thank god for those coffee shop dates that were more or less nights of ambitious productivity disguised as Amelia trying to find human connection. In those times I was mostly finding Johanna at any hour on any day. Most of the time we'd end up chatting about anything but our respective projects and eating snacks uncontrollably (when we had them). Sometimes we'd migrate and wonder to another coffee shop or we'd abandon work altogether.

Dark and cold weather is stew weather. But it's also fitting that lamb stew potluck night for St. Paddy's was Jo's most anticipated event of the year. For good reason - it was fall-off-the-bone tender. My contribution was Irish soda bread with whiskey soaked raisins.

Once upon a time I made a pot of lamb stew (using chops that looked like almost anatomically correct hearts).

lamb stew
lamb chops, browned in beef fat

onions

garlic

1/2 c red wine

1/2 t oregano

1/2 t parsley

1/4 t cumin

1/4 t ground coriander

dash chili powder

1 can crushed tomatoes

1.5 cans veggie stock

4 potatoes

4 carrots

button mushrooms

1T cornstarch + cold stock slurry

-sautee aromatics
-deglaze pan
-add stock and crushed tomatoes with spices, simmer
-add potatoes and carrots to soften
-add mushrooms
-add back chops
-thicken with slurry
-garnish with cilantro if you're like me and needed to use the stuff up fast

But I'm getting sidetracked.
The point is it's hard to say how sane I would've been coming out of March without Jo and her lamb stew [amongst other people and foods]. Thanks for being as antsy and unfocused as me. I'll miss turning all our trivial complaints into dramatic grievances next fall... unless, you know, you follow me to Oakland.

h a p p y b i r t h d a y Johanna!